# Quote — James Allen, As a Man Thinketh

> Your circumstances may be uncongenial, but they shall not long remain so if you but perceive an Ideal and strive to reach it. You cannot travel within and stand still without. Here is a youth hard pressed by poverty and labor; confined long hours in an unhealthy workshop; unschooled, and lacking all the arts of refinement. But he dreams of better things; he thinks of intelligence, of refinement, of grace and beauty. He conceives of, mentally builds up, an ideal condition of life; the vision of a wider liberty and a larger scope takes possession of him; unrest urges him to action, and he utilizes all his spare time and means, small though they are, to the development of his latent powers and resources.
>
> Very soon so altered has his mind become that the workshop can no longer hold him. It has become so out of harmony with his mentality that it falls out of his life as a garment is cast aside, and, with the growth of opportunities which fit the scope of his expanding powers, he passes out of it forever.

- Author: [James Allen](https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-allen.md)
- Book: [As a Man Thinketh](https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-allen/as-a-man-thinketh.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/James_Allen#Visions_and_Ideals) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-allen/as-a-man-thinketh/your-circumstances-may

## More from this book

> Calmness of mind is one of the beautiful jewels of wisdom. It is the result of long and patient effort in self-control. Its presence is an indication of ripened experience, and of a more than ordinary knowledge of the laws and operations of thought.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-allen/as-a-man-thinketh/calmness-of-mind.md)

> As you cannot have a sweet and wholesome abode unless you admit the air and sunshine freely into your rooms, so a strong body and a bright, happy, or serene countenance can only result from the free admittance into the mind of thoughts of joy and good will and serenity.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-allen/as-a-man-thinketh/as-you-cannot.md)

> A man becomes calm in the measure that he understands himself as a thought evolved being, for such knowledge necessitates the understanding of others as the result of thought, and as he develops a right understanding, and sees more and more clearly the internal relations of things by the action of cause and effect he ceases to fuss and fume and worry and grieve, and remains poised, steadfast, serene.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-allen/as-a-man-thinketh/a-man-becomes.md)